


A Door Once Opened (Cannot Be Closed)

by rei_c



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 14:38:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16327901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/pseuds/rei_c
Summary: He wouldn’t change a thing, though. He has no regrets. The ritual worked, and Hecate came, and the door opened, and magic granted herself to Stiles so that Stiles could save the pack.





	A Door Once Opened (Cannot Be Closed)

**Author's Note:**

> _From childhood’s hour I have not been_  
>  As others were—I have not seen  
> As others saw—I could not bring  
> My passions from a common spring—  
> From the same source I have not taken  
> My sorrow—I could not awaken  
> My heart to joy at the same tone—  
> And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
> 
>  
> 
> Edgar Allan Poe, "Alone"

_What we didn’t understand, Derek_ , Stiles writes, _is that the door, once opened, cannot be closed and cannot offer a return. The door simply disappears. I love you_ , he writes, _and I’m sorry, but I belong to her, now._

Stiles ends the letter there, doesn’t bother signing it. He flicks his fingers and it folds itself up, envelope appearing already-addressed, stamp forming out of the air and settling in place without direction. Stiles blinks and the letter stuffs itself, the envelope seals itself, the air sparkles as the entire thing disappears. Even though it’s ready to be sent, it will never be delivered. 

\--

They were stupid children, playing around with forces they didn’t understand. Or they were desperate, in need of power they didn’t have to face an enemy they couldn’t win against. It’s a toss-up, sometimes, trying to decide which of those is the true story. 

Both, probably. 

\--

The top half of the Dutch door leading outside swings open and a woman says, "Stiles, how long have you been sitting at that table?" 

Stiles turns his head, dips his chin, says, "Hecate. You grace me with your presence." 

"What’s put you in such a mood?" she asks, teasing, as she enters the house. The wind follows her inside, stirs the coiled and twisted tendrils of her long hair, curls around the back of Stiles' neck and slides up his scalp. Soft concern is written in her eyes; Stiles looks away from it, back down to the table. The door closes. The wind disappears. 

"Sorry," Stiles says. "But I’m not good company today." 

Hecate smiles, reaches out, cups Stiles’ cheek. "I don’t care," she says, soft. "You’re still family." 

\--

In the ancient days, when gods and monsters roamed the earth, Stiles would probably be considered one of them -- though which one, he’s not entirely sure. It would depend on the day, most likely, and his attitude, the person meeting him, the circumstance. There’s nothing human about Stiles, not the unnatural glitter-sheen of his hair, the fire in his eyes, the way that the air around him seems to pulsate with possibility. Some might be generous, simply call him god-touched, but magic herself was never considered a being -- for good reason, because she simply _is_ , a force greater than any god. 

Hecate, of all the gods, would be closest to magic’s family -- its eldest child, perhaps. She was the first that magic went to, the first who earned her love and her blessings; over time, the stories changed and the legends grew because it’s easier to accept a goddess than an incomprehensible energy. Hecate became mistress, owner, supplier, instead of loved, gifted, chosen.

If Stiles lived in such a time, the same might have happened to him. 

\--

"I read your letter, y’know," Hecate tells him, later. "One of them, at any rate. You could summon him. He’d come, I think, if you called." 

Stiles doesn’t get upset at her meddling. He’s used to it by now and he knows that she’s right. If he sent Derek his address, Derek would come. If he so much as thought about it, magic would pick Derek up from wherever Derek is and set him down, naked and ready, in Stiles’ bed. Magic loves, in entirety and unconditionally, the way children do, and, like children, she would do anything for those she considers her own, her chosen. 

Sometimes, uncharitably, Stiles thinks that things might have been better if magic didn’t love him, if Hecate had never opened the door for him, if they’d never found the ritual and fueled it with their blood and desperation. He wouldn’t change a thing, though. He has no regrets. The ritual worked, and Hecate came, and the door opened, and magic granted herself to Stiles so that Stiles could save the pack. Everyone is alive and Stiles wants for nothing -- except Derek.

"I don’t want him to have to choose between me or the pack," Stiles finally says. "You know that, Hecate." 

"I know that’s not everything," Hecate replies. She plucks a bouquet out of the air -- chrysanthemums and Queen Anne's lace, roses and hydrangeas, tulips and peonies -- and takes it to the sink, shearing scissors made of diamond appearing in her hand as she spreads her fingers for them. Stiles carries over the glittering crystal vase that shimmered into being on the table, stands next to her and looks out of the window over the sink. A rainbow curves across the sky; three deer pause on their way across the field of wildflowers and incline their heads before moving on. "He won’t be afraid of you," she says, arranging the roses and peonies. "He loves you. Give him some credit." 

Stiles sighs, pushes away the plate of curly fries and candied bacon that settles on the counter but pulls the blanket draping itself around his shoulders a little tighter. He likes this yarn, rubs the edges of the blanket between his fingers. "I’ve changed," he says. "The person he fell in love doesn’t exist anymore. I live in a world of impossibilities and the instant gratification of every desire, even the ones I can’t articulate." The blanket feels like a hug, like warmth and acceptance and love. "Are you saying a human would be able to take one look at me and not run away screaming?" 

Hecate elbows Stiles lightly, says, "He’s not a human." 

"So he won’t run," Stiles says. "Doesn’t mean he’ll stay, either." The fingerless gloves fit the curve of his knuckles and palm perfectly; the beanie’s tight but not stifling. Stiles looks down as thick, woolen socks wrap around his feet and ankles and halfway up his legs under his flannel pants. "Oh," he says, because magic knows what Stiles wants. 

Magic and Hecate. The goddess finishes the flowers, lets the shears disappear back into thin air, and tugs Stiles into another room. The kitchen always stays but the other parts of the house change and warp -- Stiles gets high ceilings and two stories with long banister railings around Yule; when it snows outside the house shrinks down to cabin size with a giant fireplace; when it rains the roof is all skylight -- and this was his bedroom this morning, cozy and filled with mountains of quilts and piles of pillows, but now it’s half-sunroom, half-greenhouse. Hanging baskets and huge terra cotta pots of giant ferns fill the space, ivy's creeped up the walls behind him, and in front of him, above him, around him: two walls of windows and a glass roof, the faint idea of butterflies and dragonflies and ladybugs darting around, never there if Stiles looks directly but visible in the edges of his vision. 

Hecate pulls him over to the giant loveseat in the middle, pushes him into the squishy sink of it and sits down next to him. A heap of blankets pile themselves over the pair and Hecate wraps an arm around him, arranges them so that their feet twine and their legs are pressed together and Stiles’ cheek is on her shoulder and her cheek is on his beanie. 

\--

In the early days, they thought it was his Spark, that the ritual knocked something loose and gave Stiles the ability to tap into the wellspring of power Peter always said he could sense. For a while, they thought that maybe the Spark was something like a muscle, and the ritual exercised enough to give Stiles more: more power, more control, more ability. They thought, maybe, that Hecate had gifted him, or that the magic would dissipate slowly, or that he was feeding off the ley lines under Beacon Hills. 

They never imagined that it would get worse, that magic would cling to Stiles like another layer of skin, that he would start to wield it, start to see it, start to breathe it. They never thought it would be a problem until the day that Stiles woke up to see his mother sitting on the edge of his bed, smiling down at him, whispering his name.

_Mieczysław_.

Stiles ran, after that. It was better for everyone. 

He learned, later, that magic’s chosen always run. 

\--

"I miss him," Stiles says, finally, with the heat of the sun warming his cheeks. "I miss him so much. But I can’t ask him to decide between a pack I sacrificed everything for and my madness." He snuggles closer, says, "It’s not a sacrifice. I’m blessed. I know that. So many people would kill for what I have, to know that someone loves them as much as I’m loved. But this is madness. How I live is madness. The only way we can accept it is because _we’re_ insane." 

"It’s the gift she gives us last," Hecate agrees. She shifts, throws a leg over Stiles’ lap. "We can’t see the world clearly unless we’re not of it."

Stiles adjusts so that Hecate’s leg doesn’t fall. It makes him settle a little more firmly into the sofa, feeling nothing so much like he’s being eaten alive between cushions and blankets and the pillows that prop up the small of his back and the tilt of his head. A dragonfly thrums past his ear; a butterfly kisses his cheek with its wings.

"He’s of the world," Stiles says, "and I’m not. That’s a bigger divide than Romeo and Juliet ever had to cross and look how they ended up." 

"He would still come," Hecate says. Outside, wind-chimes play music with the breeze. 

Stiles listens, for a long time, then says, "Yeah, well. He’s always been a bit of an idiot." 

\--

He asked Hecate, once, in the early days, when Stiles was still getting used to living alone, to living like _this_ , why there weren’t others, why she was the only one who came to visit him. 

"Because all the others eventually chose to move on," she told him. "And I never did." 

"I’ve asked for death a hundred times already," Stiles said, admitted, as they sat there in a library, books floor-to-ceiling on every wall, the room cold and lit only with candles as the wind howled outside. Stiles had been clutching a mug of hot chocolate and wearing a hoodie three sizes too big for him. "She gives me everything else. Why hasn’t she given me that?" 

Hecate reached over, wrangled one of Stiles’ hands free in order to grip it tight. "Because," she said, "you don’t mean it. Not yet. Maybe not ever." Stiles looked at her, his attention sharp, interest piqued. Hecate shrugged. "You’re different from the others. You’re -- adaptable. None of the others needed to run quite as soon as you but none of them settled into their territory as quickly once they’d started running."

"Not even you?" Stiles asked, and a piece of parchment drifted down from the ceiling, landed on the table between them. Stiles glanced at it, at the name at the top and the name at the bottom, and said, "Suddenly things become a lot clearer. Are we all related to you?" 

"Yes," Hecate said, as if the word was being pulled from somewhere deep inside of her, painful and reluctant. "But none so directly." She paused, said, "I shall call you little brother, I think, rather than great-great-great-and-on-and-on-grandson."

Stiles bit his lip, drank the chocolate to soothe the sting, wanted desperately to be anywhere but there, looking at the hope in Hecate’s eyes. "I already have a babcia and a nonna," he said. "Had them, anyway. Sister it is, though I reserve the right to be a brat about it." 

"I’d expect nothing less," Hecate said, "and I could hope for nothing more." 

\--

Night falls. Outside of the glass, the wildflowers sway under the light of the full moon and a million stars. It’s beautiful -- no matter how many times Stiles sees it, no matter how many times magic shows it to him, gives it to him, it always is. 

"Can I stay tonight?" Hecate asks. "I don’t want to leave you alone just yet but I’ll go if you’d prefer." The house shudders and shifts around them. "Thanks," she says. "Come on; let’s get some sleep." 

She slides off the couch and the blankets glimmer out of sight. By the time Hecate’s pulled Stiles up, the couch is gone as well, leaving them all the space to walk through the doorway. There’s a staircase -- a spiral thing of wrought iron and wood -- leading up to a loft with a matching railing protecting the edge. Hecate’s still got Stiles’ hand in hers; she leads him up and laughs when she sees that the entire loft is a mattress, piled with sheets and blankets and throws of all shapes and sizes. 

"You want the best things," she tells Stiles. "The very best." Then she lets go and throws herself down, squirming to get comfortable. 

Stiles walks across the mattress to the corner, where the ceiling slopes down so far that he ends up crawling on hands and knees to get there, in the end. There’s a heap of his favourite fabrics waiting for him and a small window to see outside and a skylight just above to let the light of the full moon shine down on him. 

He’s half-asleep, curled up tight, when he hears the wolf howls start up. Hecate doesn’t say anything about the tears on his face when she rolls over to him. She licks them up, lets the magic strip them, and holds him close, skin-to-skin, all night. 

\--

When Stiles woke up that first day without Derek, he’d thought that nothing could ever hurt as much. He was wrong. Every day hurts a little bit more. 

This morning, alone, with the sky outside covered in clouds, it hurts enough to drive him down to the kitchen, pick up the pen sitting on the table, and write. 

 

_I’ve written this letter every day for a while, now, and every day I think that maybe this will be the day I send it. I never do. Things have changed. I have changed. The person you loved is dead; the person who loved you is gone. Magic_ , he writes, _is not a thing to be owned. It -- she -- cannot be controlled. The people she loves, she loves intently, deeply and without reservation, and bestows all of her gifts on them,_ all _of them, in every permutation, to every level. When the door opened, at the end of that ritual, I walked through. I became one of those people. What we didn’t understand, Derek, is that the door, once opened, cannot be closed and cannot offer a return. The door simply disappears. I love you_ , he writes, _and I’m sorry, but I belong to her, now._


End file.
